I thank you for the honour you are pleased to confer upon me. [1] Let me however request that you will not call me the greatest poet of the age; – if I should hereafter be ranked
among the greatest it will be fame sufficient.

Your tragedy reached me last night. I have perused it with much pleasure, & could say much in its praise: – but as
it is not yet published I will rather point out two trifling instances (I believe they are the only ones) in which you seem to have
forgotten that your scene lies in the East, & that the personages are Turkish. You speak in one place of the soldiers feather as an
object of vulgar attraction, [2] & in another of the hermits wooden chair. [3]This is <Both are> of so little importance that they are perhaps hardly worthy of notice.

Believe me Sir

Yrs with sincere respect

Robert Southey.

Should any occasion lead you into this part of the world, I trust you will give me an opportunity of becoming
personally acquainted with one who, I trust, is destined to hold a high place among our dramatic writers.

Notes

* MS: Pforzheimer Collection, New York Public Library, Misc
3557. ALS; 2p.Unpublished. BACK

[1] Neale had
dedicated his Mustapha: A Tragedy (London, 1814) to Southey ‘AS A TESTIMONY OF ADMIRATION/ FOR THE GREATEST POET OF
HIS AGE’. BACK